SNG180 9th Place, PLOmaha8, Expensive Mistakes, Borgata Trip, Birthday

Confusing title I know, yet I am just trying to organize everything I want to talk about tonight. To start, I have played 4 SNG180 in the past few days. I have placed 30th, 9th, 31st and 169th in a bad beat 2 outer. I feel very comfortable with my game, and I probably would have gone further had my KJ all-in held up vs a guy calling close to all his stack with 33. I just don't know who makes that play. Good for him I guess, and I wasn't unhappy about my play. Tonight as I was winding down I couldn't get my AQs hold up vs 77. Tough one again.

I was trying PL Omaha 8 tonight and I won this beautiful hand.

http://www.pokerhand.org/index.php?page=view&hand=160304

I made some small mistakes pushing some hands, but I managed to split the pots. Later I saw that I was ahead only to win the high, and he certainly had many outs to scoop.

Two of the hands I want to talk about is a NLHE$2-4 Shorthanded and a tournament hand that cost me a lot of chips. The shorthanded hand first.

I had 99 UTG and I raised to $15. The big blind who is solid aggressive but makes some loose calls, cold calls. The flop comes 8s 5s 2s. The pot has about $32 and he checks. I bet $30. He had check raised me on two other occasions, and he did it again. The bet was about $80. He had me covered, and I had about $330 in front of me at the beginning of the hand. My thoughts were, he has the As and is trying to push me off my hand. I should reraise him as not to show weakness and to not give him this draw. So I reraised to about $170. He pushed all in. I called. He showed the As and another A. My hand didn't improve and I lost all my money. Here are two things to think about and the lesson I learned playing my hand: Making the reraise was a perfectly normal play and I will sometimes force weaker hands to lay down, in any case, I was not the favorite to win the hand. If my opponent held As and K-Q-J-T of any other suit, he would still be a favorite. Had I known that I would have probably folded to the all-in bet and I should have. Yet somehow I thought I was ahead with the hand I had put him on.

Here is the tournament hand: I have AKo in the Cut off position with all my chips, it is pretty early. UTG limps for $20 chips and he has about $900 in chips. I raise to $100 and he calls it. Flop comes Q Q 2 rainbow. He checks. My thoughts were: he missed the flop and I will bet pot size to take this down. I bet pot sized, he reraises me all and in an instance I clicked the call button. Big mistake, and here is what I should have been thinking: Bet half the pot, if he moves on me he probably hit his Q and I should be done with the hand. The reason you ask??? Only way he calls any bets here is if he has the Q or one of the deuces. By pushing he probably had the Q and I should have just folded, instead I called. Sometimes I make these dumb mistakes, but it's good to reflect on them.

My birthday is coming up next Tuesday, so tomorrow I am going to Atlantic City to play a bit at the Borgata. I am hoping to get at least 10 hours since I got the room at the poker rate. I plan to enjoy the clubs and some good meals. On Monday I will spend MNF at a friends house drinking and on Tuesday I plan to either get really drunk playing beer pong or just plain get really drunk. I will be turning 27.